28 Facts About Pi That You Probably Didn't Know

That's right, March 14 is international Pi Day. Get it -- pi is 3.14, and March 14 is 3/14?

By Brandon Butler
Thu, March 14, 2013

Network World — That's right, March 14 is international Pi Day. Get it -- pi is 3.14, and March 14 is 3/14?

Most everyone knows pi -- the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. But how much do you really know about this magical number? Below are 28 fun facts about pi split up into tidy categories. Enjoy!

[ MORE PI DAY: 10 Awesome ways to celebrate Pi Day 2013

EVEN MORE PI DAY: 10 More ways to celebrate Pi Day ]

Pi in society

-Pi Day is also Albert Einstein's birthday, along with the birthdays of Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman, Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, and last-man-on-the-moon Gene Cernan.

-There is a pi cologne.*

Computing pi

-Computing pi is a stress test for a computer -- a kind of "digital cardiogram.*

-The record for calculating pi, as of 2010, is to 5 trillion digits (source: Gizmodo).

Random pi information

- If you were to print 1 billion decimal values of pi in ordinary font it would stretch from New York City to Kansas (source: Buzzle).

- 3.14 backwards looks like PIE.

- "I prefer pi" is a palindrome.

Pi jokes

-If you divide the circumference of the sun by its diameter, what will you have? Pi in the sky! (source: Jokes4us.com)

- What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o'-lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin pi! (source: Jokes4us.com)

Pi in movies and TV

-There's a reference to Pi in "Star Trek." Check it out here.*

-Many movies have been made about pi, including "Pi: Faith in Chaos," which is about a man who goes mad trying to rationalize pi.*

-Other movie references to pi include pi being the secret code in Alfred Hitchcock's "Tom Curtain" and "The Net" with Sandra Bullock.*

-In the book "Contact" by Carl Sagan, humans study pi to gain awareness about the universe.*

Pi's numbers

-The first million decimal places of pi consist of 99,959 zeros, 99,758 ones, 100,026 twos, 100,229 threes, 100,230 fours, 100,359 fives, 99,548 sixes, 99,800 sevens, 99,985 eights and 100,106 nines.*

-There are no occurrences of the sequence 123456 in the first million digits of pi -- but of the eight 12345s that do occur, three are followed by another 5. The sequence 012345 occurs twice and, in both cases, it is followed by another 5.*

-The first six digits of pi (314159) appear in order at least six times among the first 10 million decimal places of pi.*

-At position 763 there are six nines in a row, which is known as the Feynman Point.^

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